


The End of the Interrogation

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Genocide, Interrogation, Torture, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:44:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cylons have left the Colonies. The Pegasus and the resistance have defeated them, together, but they don't know how.  Set in an AU in which the Pegasus and the resistance never make contact with the Galactica, but they do make contact with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Interrogation

**Author's Note:**

> Betareader: sunshine_queen, who convinced me that this is a pairing that makes sense.
> 
> Note: Based on drabbles and ficlets I wrote for a variety of prompts at 13th_tribe and bsg_kink.

When the _Pegasus_ landed on Caprica all the Cylons were gone. Sam Anders and his fighters, and the few humans they had managed to save, stood waiting as they landed. Those who were strong enough to stand.

"We need you now," Anders had said, after they made contact. She had been doing a routine sweep looking for military survivors and he identified himself as the leader of irregular forces. He told her about the Farms, and what humans there were kept for. They spoke by radio every day since, though there was nothing to coordinate, the _Pegasus_ would harass and attack the Cylons to distract them while the resistance set bombs and turned Caprica into a Cylon hell. Not much of a plan. But it had worked. The Cylons were gone, and the planet was theirs.

Anders saluted, as befits a militia leader to an Admiral. Cain saluted back, and meant it. By any standard that mattered he was the greatest military leader who ever lived. The Cylons had been undefeatable, and yet Caprica was theirs.

There were twelve thousand humans left alive on Caprica. That included the surviving members of the resistance and the humans from the Farms that they had managed to save. Combined with the _Pegasus_ crew, there were nearly fifteen thousand human beings left alive. If Cain had saved the civilians on the _Scylla_ and its sisters there would have been two thousand more. 

"How did you do it?" Cain asked Anders when they had a moment to spare from the celebration. "Do you know what it was? The strike that made them go away?"

"It was a bomb in a coffee shop," Anders said. "They had rebuilt one and were having coffee in it. I blew it up, and it knocked me out. When I came to, three Cylons were arguing with each other and two knocked the third over the head and let me out. A week later they were gone."

"Never would have figured them as wanting to have coffee together," Cain said. "It sounds like trying to mimic friendship." The memory forced itself into her mind of Gina's lips closing over the rim of a small cup of fine espresso, then her tongue licking at a falling drop. She had found Gina's mouth fascinating. She remembered bending over the table to kiss her, in front of the restaurant and her friends and the gods and everyone. She remembered the joy in Gina's eyes.

"We've got one here," Cain said, pulling herself out of the memory. "We've broken it in interrogation but haven't got many answers. Do you want to see it?" It was the one made to look like a tall blond woman, Cain explained. _The one made to ooze deceptive sensuality_ , Cain didn't say. _The one built to pretend to love in a deeper way than you ever imagined possible_.

"Gods," Anders said. "One of those killed five of my fighters. At that point we thought there were eighty-three humans left in the universe, and she killed five of them. And one of those was the model in the coffee shop, one of those that got into a fight and let me go. She'll know what was going on there. Yeah, I'll want to interrogate it," he said. "Tomorrow."

Cain took her leave of Anders and went to the holding cell where Gina was kept. The guards were all off celebrating. As they should be. Cain knelt down, uncovered Gina, took the damp cloth she had grabbed on the way and began to clean her thighs. They were covered with crusted blood and semen. It was a way of breaking her. She was broken. "How did they program you like this?" Cain asked. "To kill everyone I care about while pretending that you love me? How did they make your programming feel so real?" Gina trembled, softly, at the touch of Cain's fingers, and even the memory of all the rapes Cain had ordered were only barely enough to keep her from taking Gina into her arms. She stood, covered Gina, and took two steps towards the door.

"Wait," Gina said.

Cain left the room and closed the door behind her. She kept walking until she was off the _Pegasus_ and her feet were on the ground. She walked all night on the broken planet, looking at homes that had been burnt. The streets were strangely clean, with few dead bodies, and when she found a huge pit with piles of still-smoking bones she immediately knew why. 

They hadn't been back to Tauron, Cain's home. Sometimes Cain could see it in the distance, and she imagined it still burning. The ship's sensors told her it was still too radioactive to get near. The Cylons had cleaned Caprica of some of its radiation, since they had intended to stay here. It was lucky, in a way, because it meant that humanity had something of a chance to survive.

In the morning hours she walked the streets of Caprica City. She found the coffee shop that Anders had exploded. She could tell it had recently been in use, the ground was littered with paper cups and coffee grounds. The Cylons murdered forty billion people, burned their bodies, and sat in their homes drinking coffee. Cain thought of Gina at dinner, her eyes laughing, each smile like an embrace and a secret made for Cain alone. She looked down at the coffee cups on the floor, and walked back to the _Pegasus_.

"What did you want to tell me?" she asked Gina. She stood near the door this time. This time she wouldn't get so close.

Gina sat up, moving slowly. The torture had damaged her. That had been its purpose. "I have an answer," she finally said, her words slow and soft. "Why we left the Colonies."

"We broke you," Cain said. _You. The Cylons. You._

"Not that," Gina said. "It was a decision we made. Me and another model, an Eight called Sharon. But it was me. I did it."

"Why?" Cain asked.

Gina said nothing, only hummed softly. It was a taunt. A dare. She thought about bringing in Thorne to get more information out of her, but this was working better. She'd try again later.

Back on the bridge, Cain set up rotations of Raptors scouting for Cylon ships. She wanted to make sure they weren't surprised the next time. Thorne was on leave, looking for his ruined home down on the planet, so two crewmen asked Cain if the Cylon in the brig was available for use. 

"Not today," she said. "Anders wants to ask it some questions." Normally she would have allowed it, but there didn't seem to be any purpose. The rapes had done their job. It had shown her crew that the Cylons weren't superhuman after all. 

But now they knew that. Everyone knew it. Anders had shown it by defeating them.

Anders took two hours for his interrogation and came out looking rattled. "It's okay," Cain said. "It does that to people."

"Yeah," Anders said, and shook his head. "She took my hand. She said she recognized me." 

"From the coffee shop," Cain said. 

"I think so," Anders said. He grasped the dog tags he wore. "She pointed at this. It's from my girlfriend, Kara Thrace. She gave it to me before the war. Said she'd always come back. But the…she pointed at it. Said I know love."

"It's built to do that," Cain said. "To use love to manipulate people. To play on their feelings." Something in her voice said more than she wanted it to say, and Anders heard it.

"Gods," he said. "You…I'm so sorry."

Cain shrugged. "They do that. They make fools of us. And I'm sorry about your girlfriend."

"It's funny," Anders said, "I still keep thinking she's going to come back. Does that make any sense?"

She thought about Gina broken in the brig, and the place in her that wanted to just go there and cry in her arms until their crying was done. "I think it does," Cain said.

When Cain got back to her office she found a pile of petitions from crew asking to be released from service. It made sense. There wasn't much to do now aside from patrol, and re-settling Caprica was a priority. When they were stronger perhaps they could organize an attack on the Cylon homeworld, but now wasn't the time. She released all the conscriptees first. Career military were more useful to her so she wanted to hold them for a while yet. And she told Thorne she wanted exclusive access to the prisoner. She had gotten her talking, she said, and so had Anders, and they wanted to continue to get what information they could.

"You don't think this is the first time," Gina said to her later. "We were made for this. Made to be frakked. The first Cylons were shaped like soldiers for fighting or like dolls for frakking. I know what it's like to be frakked by people who don't think you're real. I knew it before I even met you."

 _So you showed it to me_ , Cain thought. "You're talking, though," Cain said. "Keep talking."

"It's like wires," Gina said. "I'm made of wires. So is this ship. I can connect to it and speak to it. But how do I speak to you? When they frak me it's like a spark. Pain as sensory overload. The wires are jammed. I'm not me anymore."

 _Good_ Cain almost said, and then didn't. She remembered Gina's open, free laugh. "Why did the Cylons leave?" she asked finally. "What worked to drive you off?" It was the routine question, and as per routine, there was no response.

Those who left the _Pegasus_ settled with the resistance and Farm survivors in houses they rebuilt in what had once been a nice neighborhood of Caprica City. With some work they had managed to get electricity and water flowing. Cain picked out a nice largish house, one appropriate for an admiral, and began to move in some of her things. The next day Anders came to her house. "Look," he said, "We need to talk. You can't stay here."

She explained that the _Pegasus_ was going back up, to patrol from space, and that she was going with it. She just wanted someplace to return to, occasionally. Something that wasn't a room on a ship to think of as home.

"That's not it," Anders said. "It's the conscriptees. They're going to have a hard time living with you as civilians."

"They can learn to handle it," Cain said.

"Cain," Anders said. "You killed their families."

It was not an exact truth, it was Cylons that had killed them, but it was true enough. There were fifteen thousand human beings left alive in the universe. If Cain had made different decisions there might be two thousand more. Or none at all. "We needed their equipment," Cain said. "We all needed it. And we needed it right away." She remembered the messages from Anders, his urgency, the truth about the Farms. "Would you have done differently?"

"I'm not saying that," Anders said. "I'm just saying you can't stay here."

If they were still in space she'd have shot him for mutiny. But he wasn't one of her soldiers, he was the leader of the irregulars who had liberated the colonies. He was also right. And she wasn't going to kill anyone over a house on a planet that wasn't even Tauron. She packed her things up and took them back to the ship.

"So now we have something in common," she said to Gina later. "We both conquered Caprica and then left it."

Gina smiled, a strange, feral smile, so unlike the radiant one Cain had loved to kiss. "Why did you leave?" she asked.

Cain shrugged. Anders had been right. It was ridiculous to pretend that she could live a normal civilian life after everything she had done. After everything she had felt necessary to do. The bruises and lacerations were still clearly visible on Gina's thighs. "I've become like a razor," Cain said. "Everything stripped away but the blade. That's all that's left. That's all I am."

"I left because I love you," Gina said. 

The words hung in the air.

"We loved humans. Me and my sisters. It wasn't supposed to go so deep. When we saw Sam, and his dog tags that Kara had given him, we thought maybe humans can love too. Can you?"

"I don't know," Cain said. She didn't think she wanted to. 

There were fifteen thousand human beings left in the universe. If it weren't for choices that Gina and the other Cylons had made there would be forty billion still alive.

"So that's it," Cain said. "That's why you left."

"That's it," Gina said. "Interrogation over. Can I go now?"

"Go where?" Cain asked.

"I die," Gina said. "I download. I go back to my people."

"With all our military secrets about the _Pegasus_ ," Cain said.

"That's right," Gina said. Not that it mattered, Cain thought. They clearly knew all her secrets already.

In the medlab they have a special pill that makes death painless. Cain took one and the medic on duty didn't ask her any questions. Then she stopped by the mess hall and made one cup of coffee. She took it to Gina in the brig. She watched as Gina took it from her hands. Gina's fingers wrapped slowly around it. She blew softly then touched the cup with her lips, in the beginning of a smile.

"Will you come back?" The words came out of Cain too quickly.

Gina took a long, slow sip of the coffee, then swallowed the pill and lay down. Cain lay down next to her and put one hand on her shoulder. Gina covered Cain's hand with hers, and they lay like that until Gina was gone.


End file.
